Education
¤ 500 As a violation of right, such an action is essentially and actually null. In it the agent, as a volitional and intelligent being, sets up a law − a law, however, which is formal and recognized by him only − a universal which has validity for him, and under which he has at the same time subsumed himself by his action. To display the nullity of such an act, to carry out simultaneously this formal law and the intrinsic right, in the first instance by means of a subjective individual will, is the work of Revenge. But revenge, starting from the interest of an immediate particular personality, is at the same time only a new outrage; and so on without end. This progression, like the last, abolishes itself in a third judgement, which is disinterested − punishment.